Characterization of the Recent Immigration to Chile

This paper documents the rapid increase in immigration to Chile experienced in the past few years. Our main purpose is to characterize the immigrant population and to analyze their assimilation into the local labor market. We find that immigrants are on average younger than the native-born and have higher labor force participation rates, revealing that foreign-born population in Chile comprises mostly of economic migrants. We also find that foreign-born are distributed across all skill levels, unlike other countries that have received larger shares of low-skilled immigrants. However, most of the foreign-born are overqualified for the jobs they hold despite being on overage more educated than the native-born. Even though immigrants face an adjustment period upon arrival into the country, their unemployment rate does not differ substantially from that of the native-born. Additionally, foreign-born and native-born have a similar distribution of employment across economic sectors, employment status and informality. We conclude that immigrants have integrated well into the labor market, suggesting immigration could be a factor contributing to long term economic growth in Chile.